Many modern businesses and organizations rely heavily on information technology (IT) to provide computer-based tools and services to enable them and their customers to operate efficiently. The tools and services are typically provided by a multitude of different software applications which typically run on a variety of computing hardware, such as computer servers, networking equipment, storage devices, and the like. For reasons of efficiency and ease of management, this computing hardware is increasingly being consolidated in specialized data centers.
Software applications may be conveniently arranged to run in a virtualized environment through use of software virtualization applications, such as virtual machines. In this way, a single computer server may effectively concurrently run multiple computer operating systems instances (or virtual images) and concurrently run different applications on each of the virtual images.
When deciding on what computing hardware to provision in a data center often little regard is given to the nature of the software applications that are to be run. Accordingly, poorly planned data centers may be provisioned with much more computing hardware than is actually required to run a set of software applications. Not only is such over provisioning costly, it may also lead to the software applications being deployed on the computing hardware in an inefficient manner. Inefficient deployment may lead to so-called server or virtual sprawl, the consequences of which may include significant increases in power, cooling, and space requirements.